


Letter V Two Times Rambles

by SpectralFury



Series: The Letter V Two Times [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Explanations, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-09 03:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20484512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpectralFury/pseuds/SpectralFury
Summary: Sometimes someone will post something that invokes in me a strong desire to explain things to the point that they wouldn't fit in the notes of any of the chapters. Instead they will go here.





	Letter V Two Times Rambles

There was a comment by loldelegate in Chapter 7 of _ An Open Invitation _ speaking about Ahsoka “turning” into Venatrix and Anakin having a split personality. I didn’t want to dump this as a response into their inbox, so I am sticking it here for everyone to see.

Here is my headcanon for the dark side. Be warned, this goes completely against canon.

The dark side is not something that corrupts a being into some perverted and twisted version of themselves. To me, it is simply a fact that the Force simply thrives in an environment that is suitable for it, namely emotion. People do not require some evil mystical energy field in order to become monsters. Tarkin is the best example, in-universe. The man is immoral simply because morals stand in the way of his goals. In real life, people that allow anger and hatred to become a constant part of their lives tend to generally become pariahs in their local social circles, with the exception of when their peers consist of like minded individuals. When these kinds of people get together, they gain power. These people then exercise this power to attain their goals. Goals attained, more power gained, goals are made bigger. This is a very simplistic version of how countries gain hateful people in seats of government. This power is then used in various actions and atrocities, some more visible than others. I’m sure I don’t need to list examples from real life of these atrocities, both historical and modern.

The thing about the Force is that power is concentrated in an individual naturally. A trained Force user does not need the support of hundreds of thousands of people to do great or terrible things. They only need a teacher to show them the way, after which they only need themselves. This is not a problem as long as their goals are neutral or noble. However, if the goals are malevolent or extremely selfish, then naturally issues start to arise. A Force user of sufficient power can cause a catastrophic amount of damage if they use their abilities right. Or carelessly. See: the Cron Supernova. With such power concentrated in a single evil person, power that can’t be taken away (depending on if Force inhibitors are a thing or not,) there is little an outside party can do aside from killing the wielder or convincing them to change their ways.

Regardless, in my view, the cause of such malevolence is entirely on the person. The power they use to make their desires exist, whether supernatural or mundane, is simply the tool they use to achieve them. A mundane person is still filled with anger or hatred of what they intend to destroy. The trick is that a Force sensitive allows an environment in which the “dark side” can flourish, and thus grant them greater power to make their will manifest immediately. When people succeed at doing what they desire, it creates a positive feedback loop to encourage them to continue their actions. If killing people achieves their goals, and no one can stop them, then they are encouraged to continue. It doesn’t matter if Palpatine executes someone by Force lightning or ordering Vader to strangle them. The person is dead by his hand, it was simply the tool that was different.

The “dark side” doesn’t exist. It is an excuse created first by the Je’daii, then perpetuated by the Jedi and Sith, as a scapegoat to blame when the actions of someone turns malevolent or selfish. People simply have goals, and use the power they have to achieve those goals. It just so happens that the Force can be channeled more strongly and easily when one uses their emotions. Anything extra, be it the inclination to murder or torture, were aspects of the person that already existed. The dark side is just an excuse to finally do it. The warnings against it are useless, and in fact, perpetuate the problem of people going bad until they die.

Before the Ruusan Reformation, people turned to the dark side all the time, and turned back to the light as well (though it was rarer.) After the end of the New Sith Wars and the RR came about, the Jedi implemented several reactionary policies designed to try and limit the chance of any Jedi turning to a minimum. One of these policies was the new teaching that once one goes dark, there is no going back. Any amount of anger or emotional outburst is chastised against. Initiates that struggle with their emotions are not given actual support and help with this, instead getting canned wisdom and continued warnings about the dark side. Those that ultimately don’t conform are sent off to the Service Corps in order to limit their power, and thus the amount of destruction they can cause if they do eventually fall. It was through this fear of a repeat of history that they inevitably caused it to happen again, and again, and again.

Being taught something from childhood is a powerful thing. It is very hard to change the mind of someone that grew up in a “Household of X,” with X being whatever you can think of. Religion, political views, moral choices, no matter what, children follow the parent and look for guidance. Modern Jedi grow up believing that any touch with the dark side is doom, fullstop. No hope. You will be a monster forever. So, when someone inevitably touches it, be it by accident or even for an ultimately good intention, they are not encouraged to walk away from it, or to even try to resist the perceived corruption. They were taught that there’s no chance AT ALL that they can walk away from this, that they will inevitably turn into a murderous monster.

So, with everything they were taught telling them they will be a monster, they become one. They choose to bear the mantle that was forced upon them. They were told they would surrender to their base impulses, so they do. The dark side gives them power, and they were told they would abuse that power, so they do.

Now, with all of that being said, we arrive to how Ahsoka acts.

In Chapter 1, Ahsoka slaughters a group of Togrutan villagers. In Chapter 2, she kills some troopers just to satisfy her curiosity. In Chapter 3, she plants a Force compulsion into Bail. In Chapter 6, she savagely beats Barriss and semi-enslaves her. In Chapter 7, she nearly kills a man for an insult. Later on, she will be doing some other things. None of these things are the result of the “corruption of the dark side.” These things are the result of a choice made in the worst possible circumstances, which were imposed upon her by Vader/Anakin. She had already lost faith in the Jedi after her sham trial, but she still kept many of their teachings to heart. When Vader truthfully explained how the Jedi threw their teachings aside, her foundation was ripped from under her. Everything she had been taught as a youngling was suddenly invalid, and she was grasping for purchase. Anakin offered a hand, a familiar hand, and with no other option, she took it.

This isn’t shown, but she does no true evil until the village slaughter. That is the point she actually starts to change. She sees her handiwork and thinks “I can’t turn back now.” At that point, she truly “realizes” there is only one way to go, and that is dark. This is of course, not true. Shortly after the slaughter she vomits in disgust at her actions. Her cold execution of the stormtroopers on Ilum isn’t a result of darkness, but a detachment from her actions that was forced upon her by Palpatine. On Alderaan she makes first an unconscious, then a conscious choice to not be a monster. It was a spark of love that interrupted the train of thought that she was doomed. Had she not gone to Alderaan, had she perhaps stayed with Sidious awhile longer and been bid to commit some heinous acts, which she would have done, she may have eventually turned into the monster she was told she would be.

That being said, she is obviously a different person than she used to be. She is still affected by her upbringing. In her mind, she is still being affected by the dark side and its urgings, and is fighting against them with dubious success. In reality, she is simply fighting her own hidden desires that had, up until recently, been suppressed. Her slaughter of the villagers was her first true taste of anger and guilt fueled power. The death of the troopers were her first cold blooded murders, something she was curious about experiencing after her mental disassociation. Barriss is the craving for a friend long lost, taken up to eleven. The Moff’s punishment is satisfying retribution for a personal insult. Her craving to take everything from Sidious is the opposite of the ascetic and selfless lifestyle the Jedi imposed upon her. She is caught in a trap that exists within her own mind, and because she believes the only thing she can do is give in to her base desires, she does so.

Despite all of that, she is still Ahsoka Tano. Just because murder is now a valid solution doesn’t mean she will apply it. Yes, she is more emotional than she used to be, because she is “supposed” to be. She has fallen into the same trap of misinformation everyone has been fed. That since she has turned, that these crimes are expected of her. She hasn’t realized yet that her decision to not be a monster is her unknowning fight against the dogma fed to her. In her mind, she is still a lost cause, but she is trying to do as much good as possible as that lost cause. She "fell" for the power to make things better, not worse. It is only when she truly gives up on doing good that she turns into what the Jedi say she will be.

Now we come back to the original thing. That Darth Venatrix and Ahsoka Tano are different people. They aren't. They are simply two different names for the same person. As stated before, the dark side is an artificial construct designed to explain something mundane, simply because the person can use the Force. Thus there is no death and rebirth. There is simply the change of personality that all people go through in their lives. Usually these changes are gradual, but major upheavals can cause radical shifts. Things like losing a loved one, suffering at the expense of another, or say...learning that all of your heroes are no different than your enemies. If someone wants to differentiate between the person they once were, and the person they are now, and even give themselves a new name, that’s their business, but they are still the same person. The same chain of experiences that began from their earliest memory up until what they are currently doing.

I end with this excerpt from the Revenge of the Sith novelization, in which Anakin realises that Vader isn’t real, but that there was always only himself.

_ “You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—and there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker. _

_ That it was all you. Is you. Only you. _

_ You did it. You killed her. _

_ You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were only thinking about yourself... it is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith—because now your self is all you will ever have.” _

In summary: people change themselves, not some mystical corruptive energy field.


End file.
